Sadly Only One In Four of These Is Essential For Work

 

A new survey reminds us of a problem that is so ubiquitous and so overpowering that we think there is nothing to be done and just suffer through it like morning traffic: The proliferation of email.

Anytime you look at your Inbox you can see courtesy copies of updates you have only a slight connection to, messages with more personal  content than business, conversations that are being sent to you for other's agendas, and all these covering up the few high-priority items that you'd love to find and deal with.

The survey respondents reported that:

• Only 1 in 4 is essential to work
• 14% were considered critically important 

You don't want email jams to slow responses you are awaiting. You don't want important communications between teams to be lost in a sea of trivia. You don't want your words of wisdom to be missed. So what can you do? Here are some recommendations.

In your emails:

• Write a Subject that is precise and effective
  Yes:  Action Required Before EOM
  No:  Please Read
  Never:  Record Keeping
• Avoid attachments when you can link to the latest version on a team site
• Make it useful to job, less conversational
• Eliminate extraneous content
• Break up long emails into bite-sized pieces with headings
• Organize well. Consider bullet points followed by support and background information
• The first sentence should be how it affects the reader or what action needs to take place
• "Action Requested"

In your project

• During training, distribute email tips for managing email tasks and follow-ups. For example, Outlook allows you to apply different colored flags to emails and then to insert reminders to complete. Include rules to automatically move emails from selected individuals to folders for easier processing. So many advanced features go unused.
• Provide guidance to reduce unnecessary emails and to keep emails for project-focused .

These may inspire you to come up with even better ideas for your own situation.

Is email proliferation a problem in your projects? What are you experiencing?